When 74% of Americans are on Social Media, it is not surprising that political campaigns use them strategically to create a desirable public image, attack opponents and, of course, engage supporters in ways that are aligned to their goals. Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook enable campaigns to reach a broader audience and communicate with supporters in their digital habitat. In this context, engaging supporters is key for a successful social media strategy. In fact, social media can be especially advantageous for candidates seeking to mobilize supporters to get involved with the campaign.

Bernie Sanders rode a wave of populist support that nearly upended former shoo-in Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president. Are there lessons to learn from his campaign’s social-media strategy that explain why the Bernie movement gained so much traction but ultimately came up short?
A review of hundreds of the candidates’ messages on Twitter and Facebook—using data* from Illuminating 2016, a project supported by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Syracuse University’s Center for Computational and Data Sciences—suggests the candidates took very different approaches to the digital medium in the month before Clinton clinched the nomination.

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Illuminating 2016 is supported by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and the Center for Computational and Data Sciences at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies.